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Can I ask for a continuation of that story you wrote with the wolves? I think it was an Omega's Tail

THIS TOOK A LIFETIME, I WANTED TO ADD ONE THING TO THE STORY AND IT WENT OUT OF HAND! So, yeah, sorry it took so long -.-

There are references to both the previous stories of the Werewolves!AU but you should be able to understand even if you haven’t read them ^^”

Family

It slipped past Seijuro’s mind, sometimes, how much stubborn his mate could be. It usually started by him feeling irked for something Tetsuya is — usually with quite some reason — denying him, just like that morning as Akashi stood sprawled on the bed with half his face buried in the mattress and one single eye glaring at the figure of his lover getting dressed in the setting of the rising sun outside the window behind him.

Beautiful, for sure, but that wasn’t the point.

The point was the empty bed Seijuro had tried to keep his mate into and the stinging in the back of his nape where he had been hit and the beautiful skin of his lover’s thighs being covered by clothes and that was probably a sin. If it wasn’t, it should have been.

As always, irritation soon left space to the memory of how assertive and submissive Kuroko used to be when they had first taken him in, after years as the Omega member of his previous pack, the same pack Akashi and his comrades had make sure to send away with their tails in between their legs. Seeing how far his lover had gone since then, how stronger he had steeled himself to be, Seijuro couldn’t help but smile and accept the rejection with a sigh.

When he rose on his side and grabbed a pillow to lay it under his face, Kuroko finally shot a look at him and nodded. He approached the bed while still buttoning his shirt up and bent to lay a kiss on his mate’s temple, savoring the satisfied sigh that followed it.

“The meeting should be over by a quarter to eight so I won’t be back home before my shift starts.” he reminded, “But I’ll have the afternoon off.”

“Afternoon is too late.” Akashi grunted, playing childish just to see his lover roll his eyes, “What if I want you now?”

“You’ll have to resign to your fate, Seijuro-kun, ‘cause I’m not skipping work.” Kuroko straightened up and picked his bag from the floor, checking one last time to make sure it had all the things he’d need for the day at the kindergarten, “Make sure Nigou…”

“…eats some fruit.” It was Seijuro’s turn to roll his eyes, “You do know I happen to be his father as well, don’t you?”

Kuroko just deadpanned at him.

“Sometimes I wonder if I’m not a single parent with two kids.” He sighed, but moved to the door and stopped there to wave at his husband. “Don’t let him sleep in too long or he won’t go to bed tonight.”

When the door closed behind Tetsuya, Akashi just went back to look at the window, staring at the sun peeking from in between the tall trees of the forest surrounding their lodge, up on the mountain and quite detached from the main town. It was the perfect place for a family of werewolves to live, with all the commodity for their human moments and the perfect hunting terrain for when they were forced into their animal forms. They still didn’t know the reason of their nature despite Midorima’s continuous researches — mainly because they all had been born shape-shifters, so there was no way to make a confront —, but they weren’t too much bothered.

They had built up a life that was good as it was. The stains of fear or rejections and even of hurt in their past were fading away, slowly but nonetheless, and the happy memories they were building were growing.

Akashi had run from his house and travelled alone for quite some time before meeting Midorima and Murasakibara, the two of them having accidentally hunted the same prey, and then they had followed him, for some reason. Aomine had come later, his huge wolf form growling at them as he shielded the human girl he had been fighting on his own to protect for far too long. Momoi had become their rock, the standing point to go back to every time the mutations ended, the girl smiling at them on the doorstep with clothes and towels, loving them with such a big heart sometimes Akashi felt bad for the secluded life she had been forced to embrace too. Kise had joined them shortly after, a lone wolf who couldn’t stand solitude, and then Tetsuya. Frail Tetsuya, left behind by his old pack that had done nothing but hurting him; strong Tetsuya who had found and brought to them the last addiction to their group.

The door cracked open slightly and stopped immediately, the sound of a suddenly held breath and then silence.

Akashi strived not to smirk and closed his eyes, pretending to be asleep.

The sound of soft steps on the wooden floor made it hard for him not to smile, but he managed and finally, with a loud yet clearly fake growl, the huge wight of a seven-year-old kid landed on his side, human teeth playfully aiming for his lobe.

He acted immediately, wrapping his arms around the little body of the black haired kid and growling too before attacking the brat’s neck with loud raspberries.

“Dad! No! It tickles!” Nigou struggled in his arms, but he did so giggling and Akashi took his time before finally releasing his son and allowing him to sit in the nest of his crossed legs, little hands against his so much bigger chest.

Eyes the same as Kuroko glared at him in offense for a moment and he chuckled, ruffling his eyes.

“Sorry, pup.”

“I’m not a pup! I’m a grown-up wolf!”

“Oh, is it so, now?” Akashi arched a brow and his son stuck his tongue at him, but he ignored it to pick him up and move to the door with the kid in his arms, “Because I’m sure grown-ups eat all their fruits at breakfast.”

“They do not!”

“Do too.”

“Do not!”

“Do too.”

***

As soon as Momoi turned her back to the bento she had prepared, Kise’s hands fast swapped it with another box and ran outside the kitchen faking another banter with Aomine. He showed the thumb up to Akashi, who sighed in relief, as the man helped Nigou wearing his jacket.

“So, what are the rules?”

“Daaaaaaa-aaaaad!” Nigou turned with a pout, but Akashi firmly crossed his arms and in the end the kid huffed, “Never talk with strangers, I can play but I have to stay within sight and if I hear the song I have to run to you.”

Such a good puppy, he had, Akashi knew that. He also knew that his adopted son wasn’t stupid, but he couldn’t help being nervous.

The full moon was a fairytale, nothing real. The mutation was triggered by something that seemed like some kind of song suddenly playing within their heads, a melody that called to their lower instincts, awoke the beast and demanded that it came to the forest, there where it belonged. And it was completely unpredictable.

If Akashi had to be honest, he was against every kind of prolonged interactions with humans, exception made for Momoi. He was also against Tetsuya working: as a kindergarten teacher, there were many risks if he were to mutate during work hours, but the other had done if for long before their pack came around, had his tricks and his excuses, and refused to give up despite the fact that Seijuro and Midorima had been making a fortune with on-line investments.

But he had been alone for most of his time as a kid and he knew what it meant. He didn’t want to lock his son away from the world and he knew that Nigou needed other children, people his age, to develop correctly and be happy.

He just couldn’t help but worry, okay?

He picked the lunch box Momoi was giving them trying not to betray Kise’s work and then he was forced to follow his excited son as the kid dragged him by a hand.

“Hurry up, dad! I want to be the first to give my present to Kei!”

“Obviously.” Akashi nodded, pretending to be just as invested as his son in the birthday party he had been invited to, and finally they reached the car, “Wouldn’t risk being anything less than first, uh?”

Nigou flashed him a bright grin when the car started.

***

Akashi was well-known among the children’s mothers, which pissed off his lover quite often, but as to not become “the suspicious family with one woman, one kid and a bunch of men living up in the mountain and never coming out” they both had had to accept that Seijuro had to fake some kind of interest into social interactions.

Kuroko always threw him to the hyenas as to punish him for that.

That’s why Akashi sighed, heavily, after parking beside the local children playground, but still dragged himself out of the car and reached for the passenger seat.

He was just in front of the hood when his eyes registered something red in his peripheral vision and froze him on the spot.

Something red that shouldn’t have been there, something to him far more dreadful than blood itself. Something he couldn’t help but turn his head toward.

As if his gesture had been as loud as an explosion, another pair of eyes, red, red, red, crimson, moved in his direction. Red hair slicked back elegantly, sharp handsome yet stern features, a clean face painted with soft wrinkles by the years and an expensive black suit that stood out like a sore thumb into such a little simple town.

The man was walking out of the local hostel, a taxi waiting for him with the door open already, but he stopped when he saw who was staring at him from afar. Seijuro cursed his features, because they were probably what had called the other’s attention, just as the reverse had happened, but didn’t say anything.

Eyes wide, Akashi Masaomi ignored the man in front of him to reached the corner of the street and cross the road, without even watching, and stop in front of the entrance of the playground.

The cheerful laughters of kids and the occasional yells of excitement did nothing to ease the tension that immediately stiffened Seijuro’s shoulders and clenched his fists, but the other man didn’t seem to notice. Or care.

“Seijuro.” he called out, as if he hadn’t already realized, but his voice still sounded surprised, shocked, as if he couldn’t believe his eyes.

Akashi guessed it was normal, after all the last time he and his father had met Masaomi had thought wise to grab a rifle and try to shoot his just-mutated son.

“What are you doing here?!” he hissed, violent and threatening, dangerous like the beast inside his head telling him to jump and kill, to protect his secret, his family and his pack now, as he should as the rightful Alpha.

The sound of a car door opening made his lips shot open, baring his teeth as a feral growl made his throat tremble. He could see his father flinch, but his mind was focused on the low, scared, “Dad?” coming from behind him.

“Go back into the car.” he never tore his eyes from Masaomi. He couldn’t, too much dangerous.

“D-Dad? What…?”

“Nigou, go back into the car, now.” I didn’t mean to growl, scamp, I promise I’ll make it up to you.

He could hear his son’s scared gasp at the sudden change of attitude, but he also heard the door being shut close once more and he thanked all the gods for the faith Nigou had in him.

Masaomi’s eyes had moved. They were on the car now, on Nigou through the window, and Seijuro saw red, so much he didn’t even realize the stance he was taking. Slightly bent forward, slightly crouched, ready to attack.

“Look at me.” his order was powerful, too much for even Masaomi himself to disobey. Seijuro wasn’t a child anymore, he was an adult with a family of his own to protect, and he would have been damned if he let the other man treat him like an inferior just once more. Don’t you dare look at him.

“Seijuro.” The werewolf wondered if his father had become an idiot all of a sudden, because he tried to take a step toward them.

“Stay away!” He took a step to a side, putting himself in between his father and his son in the car, and Masaomi finally took the hint for he stopped and lifted his hands palms up, as if surrendering.

“Seijuro.” he called, for the third time, as if he still couldn’t believe, as if he couldn’t stop himself. Seijuro wanted to rip his tongue out of his mouth. “Seijuro, I’m not here to hurt you.” He attempted another look at the car but his son hissed again, “Or your son.”

Akashi would have scoffed at him, had he been any less tense.

“Because there are no rifles in hand reach?” he challenged and Masaomi paled, but that wasn’t enough for Seijuro to lower his guard. The man who had given him life was also the one who shot his mother in their garden and tried to shoot him too. He wouldn’t come anywhere close to Nigou. “Don’t you dare take a step closer.”

“I won’t.” Masaomi looked scared, even more as he took a step backward, but he didn’t seem to fear his son, it was something else, “Seijuro, you need to listen to me.”

“What for?!” Akashi almost spat. The wolf at the back of his mind was howling, furious and thirsty for the fight he was being restrained from, “I thought you did not lower yourself to listen to a monster’s words, father.”

“Hunters are headed here.”

Masaomi’s voice was desperate, like a last call for help, like a last chance, and his eyes never left Seijuro’s, hoping for anything, even just a flash of recognition, whatever would give him the time to explain.

Hunters. And Seijuro wanted only to jump back in the car and drove back to the lodge, tell everybody to pack their things and leave, but he couldn’t. Hunters. He was the Alpha, he had to protect the others. Hunters. He couldn’t let his pride get in the way. Hunters.

Nigou’s scent was all around him, tainted by fear, and he knew what he had to do, what was his duty.

Not as a son but as a father, he stood.

Masaomi could recognize an opening when he saw one, and wasted no time.

“A group of eight, six men and two women. Three of them are from a research lab in Los Angeles, the others from the Tokyo department.” He looked frantic, desperate to give all the informations he could, instead of taking, but Seijuro stood motionless, still threatening and guarded.

“Why would researchers look for fairytales creatures?” he asked, dry, but his father shook his head.

“One of them says he had been attacked by a pack years ago. They know about your existence, but they need…”

“…proofs.” Akashi’s stomach dropped. Scientists, all around the town and the woods, looking for them, actually aware of what they were looking for. They needed to…

“You need to leave, Seijuro.” Masaomi’s voice overlapped his thoughts too perfectly for him to stand and he growled, unable to stop himself even when he saw the man flinch.

“What are you here for?!” he hissed instead. He couldn’t believe it was true, it couldn’t be happening. Why did he have to trust that man, anyway?! “How did you know we were here?!”

“I didn’t!” Masaomi shook his head, but once more his eyes tried to dart past Seijuro’s defense, checking on the terrified kid behind the window, for a moment before settling back on his son’s, “Seijuro, I didn’t know. Since when these people had landed in Japan, studying the places were those…like you…could leave, I’ve been sponsoring the project and…”

“You paid them!” Seijuro’s roar ripped a scared yell from some of the kids in the playground, that now turned to the source of the sudden terrifying sound. He strived, but managed to lower his voice, even if not to keep the poison out of it. “You paid the men who are out there the hunt us down?!”

Masaomi seemed disinterested in the children watching them.

“This way I would be updated on their discoveries!” he said, almost…pleading?, no, that was impossible. “I’ve been traveling ahead of them since when I received their itinerary, I checked the places they were supposed to go to make sure you weren’t there, I was trying to…”

“But you helped them find some others!” Akashi couldn’t believe his ears. His father had sold away who knew how many werewolves’ lives to…what?, find him and then?, “What do you even want from me?!”

Seijuro had been taught how to hurt others, but his father’s expression didn’t give him any kind of satisfaction. He was too worried, scared, busy planning an escape, to bother with a petty revenge.

“I just want you to be safe.”

That was it. Akashi growled, his eyes blazing with fury, and for a moment he took a step forward, ready to kill, but a kid’s scared voice, calling for his mother, stopped him in his track. Nigou’s scent was so strong in his biased mind it was almost intoxicating, it was as if all his senses where pointed on the kid. He had no time to waste.

He walked the steps that divided him from his father and grabbed his shirt with a hand, uncaring of how shorter than the other he still was. His glare, he knew, would have brought even a giant to their knees.

“Don’t you ever dare coming anywhere near me or my family.” he hissed, “You do that and I will tear you to pieces and leave your remnants for the crows to eat.”

He didn’t wait for an answer. He pushed Masaomi away and turned, reached for the driver seat and got in.

By the time his father was able to call his name again, he was already driving on the street to the local kindergarten.

***

Kuroko had been with Akashi for a little longer than four years, but he hand never seen such a furious expression on his mate’s face. Even Nigou, in his arms, seemed scared to peek at his father and just kept his nose buried in his mother’s belly.

“Seijuro…”

“We need to talk with everybody.” Akashi interrupted him, his knuckles white against the steering wheel, “I need to talk with everybody.”

“Sei-…”

“No.” Take deep breaths, Seijuro, calm down, there’s Nigou here, don’t scare him, calm down. “I am in no condition to take a lucid decision as of now and I need someone to remind me that killing my father and taking you and our kid to the other side of the planet is not a good solution.”

Akashi’s eyes never left the road, but Kuroko’s stood firm on his face. He had never seen his mate so distressed, not even when they had found Nigou, and for him to admit not to be able to think rationally…

He adjusted the kid in his lap and outstretched a arm to lay it firmly on his lover’s armpit, then patiently waited for the car to bring them to the lodge.

***

Nobody had been prepared for such a news. Momoi managed to send Nigou in his room, promising him cherry cake if he had tidied it up nicely, but then she came back to the living room and the silence stretched.

Aomine and Midorima were sitting at opposite ends of the couch, Kise on the floor in front of them, with the coffee table in between. Murasakibara had taken the floor with his back the fireplace and Momoi went to sit on the armchair behind Ryouta. Akashi and Kuroko were on their feet, in front of Murasakibara, facing him.

Seijuro was stiff, arms abandoned at his sides, a hand clenched in a fist and the other tightly wrapped around Kuroko’s, who held it with both his, but the other looked worried and tensed too.

Midorima coughed a bit. “For as much as I, too, wish we could do differently, I think you should contact your father again.”

He was barely done talking and hell had already broken loose.

“You can’t be serious, Midorimacchi!”

“Are you crazy?! No way he’s going back to that bastard!”

“I don’t like Aka-chin’s father, Mido-chin.”

“Shintarou is right.” Three words to stop the world. Everybody but Midorima, who fixed his glasses, turned to Akashi but the man was glaring at the table as if hoping to set it on fire with the mere power of his eyes.

“But Akashi-kun…” Momoi tried to intervene, but Seijuro stopped her.

“He is the only one who has any information about these hunters.”

“But what if this is all a plan for him to get to you?!” Kise’s voice was filled with worry, but his eyes were fiery, ready for the fight. Kuroko stared at those golden shade and felt a shiver running down his spine, as if an echo of the forest’s song, and for a moment he wondered if the other was already mutating. “For all we know he could have been lying about everything!”

“He found us, though.” Seijuro hissed, challenging, and Tetsuya tugged at his hand just as Momoi laid a hand on Kise’s shoulder.

“He could be lying.” Midorima admitted, “But that’s the only clue we have.”

“Why don’t we just leave, before they can do anything?” Momoi’s face snapped toward Kuroko, “Tetsu-kun, I know you have your work, but…”

“I have a pup, Momoi-san.” Ice cold filled his voice as Kuroko tightened his hands on his mate’s arm, “My job is the last thing to consider, right now.”

“Leaving is the last thing we should consider.” Midorima intervened, shaking his head.

“But why?!”

“Because we’re safer here.” Akashi’s voice drained everybody’s eyes on him as he ran his free hand on his face, sighing tiredly, “If these hunters are already headed here, an whole family suddenly packing and leaving will be suspicious, even more so if after its departure the local wolves suddenly disappear too. If this is all my father’s plan to get me, than he wants us to leave. In both the case, here in town people knew us, if we were to suddenly disappear without a word, someone would notice and start asking question.”

“If we leave, even more organizing everything and justifying our departure in a believable way, we’ll be completely defenseless if we were to get attacked on the road. Nobody would know if we were caught or killed.” Midorima concluded, fixing his glasses once more, “Staying here is our best option, even more considering how many people saw Akashi and his father fighting today: if something were to happen to us, they all would think about that immediately.”

“My father won’t risk that.” Seijuro admitted with a disgusted expression, “Which means that confronting him is really the best option we have to try to get what’s happening for real.”

“You would know if he were lying to you.” Akashi lifted his eyes on his mate as he heard that sentence — not a question, Kuroko was sure of his words, he truly believed them —, “If you feel like doing it, you should talk to him.”

It was bitter, the alpha’s laughter, but his hand was warm in his mate’s.

“Right now, what I feel is the least important part of the equation, Tetsuya.”

***

Masaomi was nervous and Seijuro was still high in his sharpened senses.

He had cursed, that morning, when he had heard the song and his bones had shifted, his human form leaving place to the huge frame of a copper wolf, but luckily his mutation had finished an hour before the appointed meeting with his father at the local hotel. Now, his senses still better than average, he could hear the man’s fastened heart-beat from his seat across of him, in the hotel dining room.

The gods knew how much Tetsuya had fought against Akashi facing his father alone. He had also bitten him just a few hours before when they were both in their wolves form, a display of disrespect against the Alpha that had shocked everybody, and then trotted away alone, unpunished thanks to his status as the Alpha’s mate.

Seijuro knew his lover was just worried, but Masaomi had already seen Nigou; he would do everything in his power to keep all the other members of his pack away from those eyes. It was their only chance of survival if things went bad. He was already compromised, but there was still a possibility that the others were unknown to the scientists.

“You think I lied.”

Akashi didn’t bother changing his cold expression when his father’s empty voice reached him.

“Call me an idiot, but it’s not my first instinct to trust someone who pointed a rifle at me.” He forced a poisonous smirk to seem pleasant when one of the waiters eyed them from afar, probably to check if they were ready to order, “I don’t expect you to understand. I guess it’s a wolves thing.”

Seijuro saw his father flinching at the word, but before he could answer back a young man was beside their table. They gave their orders, Akashi coldly and never moving his eyes from his father and the man simply pointing the first thing on the menu, clearly nervous.

When the waiter was far away from them, Masaomi leaned on the table. Seijuro refused to meet him and stood leaning against the backrest.

“They have no idea about who could be…like you, I can promise this. They studied the reports of the forest guards about wolves activity and pointed out anomalies that they thought could be due to…”

“…paranormal activities?, werewolf infection?” Akashi arched a brow, savoring his father’s paleness, “Seriously, I was expecting something better from you. Those are hardly scientific bases for a research to start.”

“I don’t know many details of how they did it, I only know they are willing to investigate any single anomaly.” Masaomi straightened noticing how the couple some tables from theirs was eyeing them, “This will be the fifth place they check, with no results ‘till now.”

Seijuro clicked his tongue, waiting for a young girl to lay their ordinations in front of them. “Did you tell them about me?”

“No!”

It felt weird, Akashi couldn’t deny that. All his life, his father had been this invincible fortress of strength, sternness and coldness; yet now here he was, desperate to be listened to. Such a change sounded suspiciously too sudden to his eyes, yet he felt now, like a revelation, all the time he had spent away from his house.

If Masaomi really had changed, he had had ten years to do so.

Weird, indeed.

“When will they be here?” Seijuro sipped on the red wine in his glass, hiding his tension imagining his lover’s scolding for such a stupid gesture, drinking alcohol in front of a possible enemy.

The relief that filled Masaomi’s face forced Akashi to drink more, hoping to forget that sight.

“Probably in a couple of days.” the man turned immediately more serious, clearly focused on collecting his thoughts, “They’ll set a camp in the forest and check the area. According to their schedule, they’ll stay here ten days, to study the wolves, and if nothing comes up during that time, they’ll move on to their next destination.”

“Which would be?”

“Somewhere in Akita, if I’m not mistaken.”

Akashi hid his shiver when he heard Murasakibara’s birthplace. He hated the pack that had thrown Atsushi away claiming they couldn’t feed such an hungry wolf, but if they were to be discovered everybody of their species would be in danger. He folded the information away to dwell on it later.

“And what will you do?” Masaomi seemed to falter at that, and Seijuro arched a brow at him, “What? Were you expecting me to come back to you like a good obedient son?”

He couldn’t help the poison and the mockery in his voice, and honestly he didn’t even try. He watched and savored his father’s lost expression.

But when Masaomi spoke, all his calmness left him and he almost flipped the table to a side.

“You have a son…” and Seijuro was on his feet, fists clenched and eyes burning.

“You will go nowhere near my son!” he hissed, far too conscious of all the eyes on them to fall to his instincts and kill the man in front of him. “Trust me,” he added, in a lower but still dangerous voice, “if it were for me, you would have never even seen him to begin with.”

“Seijuro, I know that what I did…” Masaomi stood up too, but Akashi took a step back and he didn’t finish his sentence.

He just watched his son storming out of the restaurant.

***

“Seijuro?!”

“He’s not lying. He may have changed but I know him and he would have never lowered himself that much for a lie.”

“… They are coming for real. For us.”

“They have yet to get us, Tetsuya, and I won’t let them.”

“Come home soon, please.”

“I’m on my way.”

***

Two days went by fast as they worked on preparations. It had never happened that ten days had passed without the forest’s song calling for them, so it was safe to assume they would have changed while the researchers were in the forest so they had to be prepared.

Kuroko and Midorima stocked a ten days worth food and medical supplies for Momoi and she installed hidden cameras, working on solar energy, in all the places that could have been adapt for a camp. The cave of the bear they had taken down that winter was still empty and Aomine and Kise worked on it to pretend it was the usual den of the local wolves, completely normal wolves. Murasakibara worked on the meat from their previous hunt, skinning it and cleaning it and cutting in a way that would hide it was from animals that one could hardly find in a normal butchery or supermarket.

Akashi spent time with Nigou.

He wanted to help, really, but it wasn’t safe. His encounters with his father had called too much attention already and Masaomi was still in town so he couldn’t possibly go there. It was quite probable that the researchers would hear about him in town so by no mean there could be voices of him roaming around the forest suspiciously. He wanted to help, but he was tied.

So he sat on the floor, legs crossed, with his kid in his lap playing with a firefighters trunk toy and figures of superheroes and kept on fixing his hair, caressing his belly, kissing the crown of his head or his temples. He hadn’t realized how much he needed to feel his son in his arms, safe and sound, ‘till when his father had spoke about him.

“You have a son…” Yes, he did. He would have never let anybody hurt him.

“Akashi.” He turned and Aomine stared at him with a dark expression from the doorstep. “They’re here.”

***

With Nigou in the living room, eating a snack with Murasakibara, all the others holed up in Momoi’s room. The place now looked like some hi-tech lab or an hacker’s den, with monitors everywhere and wires literally hiding the floor from sight and the lights all dim.

All the screens showed black and white static images, but one.

“It’s the place beside the river bend, south-east from here.” Aomine frowned, “I wouldn’t camp there, too many animals that need to drink and hunt.”

“They might be researchers but they don’t look like explorers in any way.” Kise cocked his head to a side, watching two of them poorly trying to put up a tent, “Could it be we worried for nothing?”

“Better safe than sorry.” Midorima scoffed from behind him, fixing his glasses on his nose, “They may not be good at living in the forest, but they did almost find us.”

“What are they saying?” Momoi pressed some buttons at Akashi’s words and everybody else shut up to listen when a cracked sound, with a lot of rustling background noise, came out from a couple of little loudspeakers.

“It’s the seventh time already that you build it up, how can you still not know how it’s done?!” was growling a feminine voice, the girl with short hair — brown? — staring at her comrades’ fight with the tent, “I swear all the wolves in Japan must be laughing at us!”

“Well,” a third man, with black hair, beside her added, “you could say they’re… howling with laughters!”

“Izuki, go die!”

Akashi stared at one of the two men with the tent trying to kick the creator of such a…distasteful joke. Then he looked at Tetsuya.

Tetsuya looked at him. Then everybody looked at everybody.

Everybody finally looked at Midorima.

“I said ‘almost’!”

***

They took turns in monitoring the situation with the researchers, but aside from a bunch of accident, those people seemed clumsily armless.

Momoi’s cameras were positioned perfectly so they always knew where to go to switch their form as to not be seen by the researchers. They also dared to appear in some of those men’s cameras to let them know the wolves were there, alive and completely normal, and with some difficulties they managed to let those poor excuses of hunters find the cave. Masaomi often came by the hunters, claiming he had been in the area for some business and pretending to be interested in the process of researches. Akashi didn’t let anyone come anywhere near the camp when the man was there, but that was it.

By the fourth day, they seemed already set to leave and move on to Akita.

On the fifth, came the storm.

***

They woke up in the middle of the night at Nigou’s terrified scream. Kuroko and Akashi ran to the kid, but Aomine and Kise stared out of the window.

The night sky was pitchy black, with no stars or moon, covered in a thick layer of dark numbs that more often than not lit up with pure white flashes. Cracks of light broke the scenery to fall on the ground with rumbling bangs, so loud all the windows trembled and vibrated.

“The forecaster didn’t say anything about this.” Kise’s eyes flickered, following the flashes of light with restless uneasiness, his body slightly hunched toward Aomine’s, whispering.

“Weather changes fast here.” he was answered, but Daiki’s eyes were darker than usual, his voice cold, “I bet those idiots didn’t consider that.”

“Maybe with this weather they’ll leave early…”

“They won’t.” Both the men turned when Atsushi’s voice called to them, but the other just frowned. “Sacchin says to go to her room. Mido-chin is calling Kuro-chin and Aka-chin.”

Aomine and Kise shared a look, but said nothing as the three of them moved to the girl’s room.

Akashi and Kuroko were there already, the second holding Nigou tightly to his chest, but all the eyes were on the screen Momoi was pointing at.

The hunters were struggling to keep their tents in place, water hitting them mercilessly, while the girl shouted orders and tried to keep Masaomi near them.

“Akashi-san stood back to talk about abandoning this area. The rain caught them by surprise and they chose to wait for it to calm down, but now…” Satsuki’s voice trembled slightly, but she gulped and went on, “A thunder hit one of the trees close by and it fell on their quads.”

Another rumbling sound underlined the silent implication of those words as everybody in the room froze.

“They can’t go back to town.” Midorima’s voice was firm, steady. He was stating a fact everybody in the room was already aware of. It didn’t mean he didn’t sound dreadfully shocked. “They’re stuck there.”

“The storm will last the whole night, probably longer.” Kuroko’s eyes darted to Akashi’s skull, fearfully eyeing the way the other was staring at the screen with the trembling human figures. Masaomi is there. “They can’t last that long.”

“They could reach the cave Aominecchi and I prepared…”

“They think wolves are in there, they won’t jump straight into their den just to escape some rain, nanodayo.”

“Well, they don’t have many fucking choices, you know?!”

“Dai-chan, calm down!”

Nigou whined against his parent’s chest at the sudden outburst of many loud voices and just with that everybody shut up again. Glances were exchanged, but in the end they all laid on a single figure.

“Aka-chin,” For once, Atsushi’s voice wasn’t bored or childishly needy; just accepting, willing to trust his alpha’s decision on the matter, “what do we do?”

I don’t know! Akashi wanted to scream. He wanted, really, he needed to, but his eyes were fixed on his father’s frame and he couldn’t do it. He didn’t want to save Masaomi, he had no reason to, felt no need, but there were other voices there, voices of men and women desperate to survive, scared. If only they had been told to leave immediately, if his father hadn’t led them on just to steal their results away, they wouldn’t be there. If Seijuro and the likes of him didn’t exist, none of that would be happening.

He turned, his eyes looking for the only steady point in his life, and Kuroko adjusted the kid in his arms just slightly, but then nodded briefly. It wasn’t a suggestion as much as an assurance that whatever Akashi would have chosen he would have received his mate’s support.

He turned to look at the screen again, where a blond woman tried to shield a younger guy with pitchy black hair from a falling broken branch.

“We can get to them cutting south est.” he declared, turning his back to the screen, to his choice, to move to the room door, “If we take the shortcut, we should make it within ten minutes.”

“The forest is restless.” Midorima offered, a bit nervously, “Ten minutes is more than enough for her to start to sing.”

Akashi stopped on the doorstep, just long enough to turn and stare at them with empty yet determined eyes.

“Then, Shintarou, let’s hope she doesn’t.”

***

They were ready to leave in five minutes. One of the hunters had gotten hurt to a shoulder slipping on the muddy ground, but it didn’t look serious according to Midorima.

Nigou was back asleep in Momoi’s arms and Kuroko kissed his head gently before reaching his lover on the backdoor exit.

“You should stay with him.” Seijuro tried one last time, but he knew the other wouldn’t listen.

Tetsuya kissed his lips with the same delicacy he had used for their son, a hand caressing his cheek, before finally shaking his head.

“You need me.” he just said and they both knew he wasn’t talking about physical help in rescuing the hunters.

They both also knew he was right.

Akashi kept the door open and they both ran out, following their comrades under the pouring rain and rumbling thunders.

***

Akashi had been right and ten minutes were enough to reach the place the hunters were at.

Midorima, too, had been right.

They had just reached a good hiding spot behind some trees, in a higher position than the chaotic camp, and were looking down at the scattered humans, yelling and running, when the song had covered everything.

It was still as charming as ever, but this time the forest seemed nervous too, pained by the weather torturing her, and resisting its desperate call was more difficult than usual.

“Wha-t…” Aomine growled, his shoulders breaking in a scaring position and black fur growing on his face and arms, as he strived to keep his human form, “…do?”

A roar, an howl, clothes exploding and a big wolf in pitchy black fur was there in front of Akashi, sided by a golden one and a huge gray one with purple eyes. Seijuro heard, more than seeing, Midorima growling lowly behind him as he too changed his form, but he resisted it some more.

His teeth were gritting, but he couldn’t care. His nails were digging paths in the mud, fists clenching onto dirt. His eyes flamed as he tried to think.

A gentle touch, a humid nose nuzzling against his cheek, and he turned slightly. The mere gesture made his spine jerk and break into an unnatural position.

The big white wolf staring at him with beautiful azure eyes was a soothing reminder of the human Seijuro wanted to be, and he let out a growl as he roared “Carry on!”.

The song exploded in his mind, his blood boiling and all his bones shifting, changing. His skin covered in warm fur and suddenly he was there, right where he belonged.

The copper wolf, the Alpha of his pack, a creature of freedom that could not be tamed, not even by his own father.

He growled to his comrades just once before jumping forward and running toward the humans. They followed him without hesitation.

***

Kagami Taiga was trained to fight. That was what he was in the mission for, but how was he supposed to defeat the storm above their heads?

Takao had hurt his shoulder, Alex’s forehead was bleeding from where the branch had hit where when she was trying to protect Himuro and the hard disks with all their datas, Hyuuga and Kasamatsu were trying to help him keep the tents in place and Riko was trying to keep Akashi-san, the only civil, safe from harm but…they didn’t even know what they were doing! They had no idea what the best course of action was, they weren’t prepared! And without the quads, they were stuck there.

He cursed, yet his boisterous voice went lost, even if not in the noise of the thunderstorm. His voice went lost, covered by the powerful raging howling of a wolf.

Kagami’s head snapped to his back, he saw them.

Six wolves, different in size and color of fur and eyes, scattered on the open road the quads used to get there and spreading like a fan to surround or corner them. They seemed completely indifferent to the rain battering them and were all growling lowly, ears pulled against their heads and tails low in between their legs.

Aggressiveness.

Everybody had frozen, but when the central wolf, and objectively beautiful exemplar with reddish fur, the color of copper or bricks, stepped forward, closing in on them, all the humans slowly tried to regroup.

All the researchers had their hands out, showing no harm, and moved slowly to stand in a line side to side, facing the beasts.

“Akashi-san!”

Riko’s voice was low but enough to snap the man out of his reverie. He kept the eyes glued on the golden-eyed wolf but stepped back with the others.

“Why are they coming out now?” Hyuuga hissed slowly, “They should be hiding in their cave with this weather!”

“Maybe we disrupted their hunting paths.” Himuro sounded honestly terrified, “If they haven’t been able to find other preys lately, it’s possible they’re trying to find some animal that hadn’t been able to get a shelter from this rain.”

“That would mean us, right?!” Kagami gulped, but moved a hand to grip on Alex’s arm and calm her down despite her scared voice, “The guns are…!”

A loud bark, threatening, made them all jerk and the red wolf seemed to be glaring at Alex herself now, as if he had understood her words.

The guns won’t work with this weather. Taiga knew that. They couldn’t possibly shoot accurately with the wind and rain and the tranquilizers would be useless if they weren’t able to follow their targets.

Kagami was going to open his mouth and run it, just to try to do something, when something weird happened and the white wolf trotted forward, moving to stand beside its copper companion. He growled lowly before turning his head to sniff at the air, looking for something, and then he pushed the other’s side with his head.

It was a weird interaction because Kagami was sure the copper wolf was the Alpha and wolves very rarely defied orders, but this time it worked and the beast seemed to calm down. The others behind them were still guarded, but the red and the white one took careful steps closer.

Hyuuga moved slightly to shield Riko, whom the wolves were approaching, but it didn’t change anything and they just switched to him. Everybody sucked their breaths in, praying that stillness would be enough to dissuade the predators from the hunt, but the wolves kept on moving forward.

And then, extremely carefully, the copper wolf bit at Hyuuga’s jacket and pulled slightly.

So slightly that the man fell forward a couple of steps, but enough for him to keep his balance. The white wolf scoffed a bit before moving to nib, far more gently, at Riko’s shoulder bag.

“What…?!” Kagami tried to say, but the black wolf in the bag growled at him. Then sneezed in his direction. Taiga decided he didn’t like that bastard.

“Uhm, is this…normal or…?” Takao looked quite bewildered, but even Izuki, the real expert of wolves behavior, seemed just as lost.

“I think they’re…asking us to…follow?”

“Asking?!” Hyuuga’s voice was clearly a bit too harsh because the wolf let go of his shirt to growl at him, “Okay, sorry!”

Riko looked down on his wolf when the other animal did so and the white beast let go of her too, but nuzzled the back of her leg to prompt her to keep on moving forward and so she did, ending up beside Junpei. The two of them shared a look, but just then the wolves move again.

With the copper and the white one ahead, moving masterfully through the scenery of foliage and mud and trees, the other wolves sided the little group of humans, leaving them with no other choice but follow them.

With the rain over them and the loud thunders, none of the humans had any chance to talk, but they hurried behind the beasts that were keeping up a fast pace.

Fifteen minutes later, drenched and soaking, they found themselves in front of a beautiful wooden lodge, well kept and clean, with lights on inside, and an ever more beautiful woman standing on the doorstep, searching the woods with her eyes. When she found the wolves silhouettes, though, she didn’t scream.

“Here you are!” she called, in relief, “You found them! Good boys!”

The copper wolf scoffed at her words and the black one in the back sneezed but the animals broke their formation to trot rapidly to the girl’s feet, completely at ease with her. She seemed to check them all one by one with her gaze, but it was such a fast movement before she moved her attentions to the humans.

“Come here!” she called, outstretching a arm, “My wolves won’t hurt you, they’re all basically domestic. Get in before you get a cold.”

The wolves in question looked quite offended by the word ‘domestic’ and slipped inside the house with their drenched furs wetting the floor. The girl puffed her cheeks at them, but soon after the humans had reached her and she just moved aside to let them in.

Kagami Taiga couldn’t believe their luck.

Aida Riko simply didn’t.

***

Momoi was on the edge, but she didn’t show it in the slightest.

She helped their guests in, let them take from a huge pile of towels so that they could dry themselves, and then busied herself drying off the wolves fur. She couldn’t know how long this mutation would last, but bad weather usually seemed to prompt the song to last longer, even for days, so she wasn’t going to risk any of them getting sick. Not to mention, caressing them made her feel safer.

Ki-chan nuzzled at her temple with his big humid nose and she giggled, scratching him behind a ear before getting up and setting him free.

The golden wolf hurried up in joining his black comrade, sitting on the floor on the doorstep to the kitchen. Of the two gray ones, the bigger one with purple eyes was lying beside the fireplace chewing at a bone Momoi had given him while the green-eyed, slightly shorter, one sat beside the couch armrest, staring at the humans sitting on it and on the armchair and on the chairs, all around the coffee table, and that was his blanket, how dared they—?

“Midorin, stop glaring at our guests.” she playfully scolded, earning a low growl in answer from said wolf.

“Where are the other two?” Momoi lifter her eyes fighting the urge to simply arch a brow and glare at the audacity of Masaomi, but the man seemed to catch on her hostility immediately and hesitated before pushing it, “The red haired and the white haired ones?”

Red-haired. Satsuki was sure he had used the words with cognition, to tell her he knew, he had understood, recognized. If he thought she would care for such a little progress, he was dead wrong.

“Oh, they’re sure somewhere around the house.” She chirped instead, dismissing the question with a hand, “Sei is quite possessive of the lodge since it’s basically their second den and he’s always checking everything. And Tetsu is always with him.” She flashed him a bright smile that barely hid her smugness as she add: “I guess that’s to be expected from mates, isn’t it?”

Masaomi didn’t look particularly shocked. Well, he had seen Akashi’s son, he was probably expecting Seijuro to have a mate. Momoi honestly just wanted to ignore him, but it would have been suspicious so she just turned her back and started preparing tea to hide the trembling in her hands.

‘Dai’, the black haired wolf, scoffed and moved to reach her, sitting quietly and watching, all the while looking…bored? Was it right for a wolf?

The humans were still busy trying to stop trembling and they all flinched when a loud noise was heard from upstairs, but Momoi only groaned.

“I can’t believe it!” she hissed, turning her head to glare at the stairs heading to the second floor, but she already had the tray with mugs in her hands so she headed to the coffee table and simply served her guests. Who were all looking at her questioningly, “Sei and Tetsu are troublemakers. Whenever they find something they don’t like, they just take it down. I bet that was my new vase.”

It sounded false, to her too, but nobody questioned that.

Especially not when, with loud noises and bangs, a drawer flew down the stairs. Even Momoi yelped, while all the wolves jumped to their feet, guarded, but shortly after that the two missing beasts, the copper and the white ones, Sei and Tetsu, peacefully trotted downstairs. They bit on the loose cloth handles of the drawer — made so that they could open them even in their wolves form, if here need occurred — and dragged it loudly to the living room.

“Oh, come on!” Satsuki pulled at her hair with an exasperated grunt, “That’s D— Aomine’s drawer! He will skin you alive when he’s back!”

The copper wolf let go of the handle to scoff at her and at the shocked bark of Dai, but the white one rummaged within the clothes to pick a shirt and then turned.

Kagami looked shocked when the cloth was laid on his knees.

An outraged howling came from the black wolf, but Sei growled at him, low and warning, and he backed off, but clearly begrudgingly. Sei trotted to his side and playfully pushed him, as if to apologize, while Tetsu kept on retrieving shirts and offering them to the men sitting in their living room.

When he brought the last one to Riko, he finally trotted back to his mate and simply slumped on the floor beside the other’s sitting form. He pushed his nose into the copper wolf’s anterior leg for a moment before lying his head on the floor and sighing heavily. Sei brushed his face against the other’s ears, but stood up.

Momoi knew he wanted to be ready if anybody tried to start a fight, but Tetsu’s behavior also told her that it was unlikely for the song to stop very soon, as it often happened during heavy storms.

She moved her eyes from the couple when he heard a low whining and she found Midorima with two paws on the couch armrest and his nose sniffling heavily at the hunter sitting there. The young black-haired man looked quite uncertain of how to act and was leaning as far as he could from the animal while biting his lips, maybe not to scream.

Satsuki groaned.

“Midorin, down!” she ordered, finding out it came extremely easily to her to order the guys around. When she approached the scene, on Midorima’s offended growl, she realized the boy had been pulling his wet shirt off and had a nasty looking dirty wound on a shoulder. Shintarou whined again and she nodded. “I have a first aid kit upstairs, wait here.”

Takao tried to stop the beautiful girl, but as soon as he opened his mouth the wolf leaning over him growled lowly. When he laid back on the sofa, the animal sneezed on him before sitting back on the floor and turning his head to another side.

“What? You pretending you don’t care?” Takao didn’t know what the hell he was doing, talking to a wolf hadn’t been in his plans ever despite the very nature of his researches — there were high doubts that werewolves could speak in their animal form — but this one was impossible not to tease. He looked like a grumpy version of a domestic dog. “Didn’t know there were tsundere wolves.”

In his life, Kazunari could finally say he had been glared at by a wild animal, who then proceeded to physically turn his back at him, sitting while staring at the kitchen. The human couldn’t help but chuckle.

“Takao, be careful…” Hyuuga tried to tell him when he saw the younger man trying to outstretch a hand toward the wolf. The researcher was a good kid, but far too often he underestimated the dangers he was facing.

Before he could add something, though, the girl hopped down the stairs, kit in her hands, and looked at the man reaching out for the wolf.

Takao didn’t look ashamed or worried when he looked at her. “Can I caress them?”

“Him. But you don’t have to ask me, Midorin is all weird.” she chuckled when the wolf scoffed at her, “Not to mention, they’re not really my wolves.” She sat on the coffee table, bending forward to press a gauze with anesthetics on Takao’s left shoulder. “I guess it’s more like they’re my pack.”

“Like, you’re one of them? That’s so cool!” Takao’s eyes were sparkling, but directed on the wolf instead of the girl he was talking to, “That was my childhood dream! Uh…?”

“Momoi Satsuki.” she cheerfully introduced herself, a hand still pressed on the wound as he used to other to point at the animals in the room, “This is Midorin and that one is Mukkun; they are Sei and Tetsu, as said; and those ones are Dai and Ki. I usually use honorifics with their names, I know, it’s weird.”

“Not really.” Takao was still in owe, his fingers hovering a inch above the gray fur of Midorin, still unsure, “This one looks like he would only answer by ‘-sama’.”

Momoi’s laughter came with the little stinging of a needle, but Takao couldn’t care less. He was still considering if touching Midorin-sama would result in a amputation of his hand or not.

“Trust me, that’s more like Sei.” A scoff from the copper wolf, “But he’s quite proud himself, indeed.”

“How did you end up, uh, in their pack?” Riko’s voice was casual, maybe a bit embarrassed, but when Takao turned he saw something on Momoi’s face, a dark shade of challenge, the kind of shadow one could see on a mother’s face as she threatened the kids who bullied her son, or something like that. He gulped, for a fight between these two women suddenly looked worse than any confrontations with werewolves.

“It’s been a bit of a long ride.” Momoi’s voice stood calm, soothing, but her eyes never left the sewing she was doing in her patient’s flesh. Takao really wished they would have kept the discussion for a moment in which he wasn’t that close to become a collateral. “At first, it was just me and Dai, we grew up together since when he was still a cub near my neighborhood just outside of Tokyo. When I moved out of my parents’ house, he followed me. With time he joined this pack and, well, the others just took me in as if I was part of the package.”

It was a weird story, Takao knew that, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that it was true. The way Momoi’s eyes softened at the sides when she was talking, the way her gaze flew to Dai for a moment, how her hands stood firm.

Takao wasn’t in the group because he knew a lot about wolves. That was more of an hobby and Izuki was the real expert, that zoologist. Kazunari was in the team because he had good eyes; very good eyes trained to spot lies. And there were none in Momoi.

He communicated so at Riko with a look and the squad leader made an annoyed face, but turned to look at the other gray wolf that was now sniffling insistently at Himuro, probably because he was their cook and had some weird smell on him.

He moved his eyes back in front of him when he heard a low growl and he saw Momoi glaring at the wolf that had finally turned again to stare at her.

“Listen here, Midorin,” she hissed, as if it was perfectly normal for her to bicker with an animal, “you’ll be allowed to criticize my nurse skill when you’ll have opposable thumbs.”

The offended yelp from the green-eyed wolf at her tone made Takao burst out laughing, unable to hold himself even when that earned him a scoff from the animal. Momoi look satisfied and finished her work quickly before starting off on bandaging him. Midorin still growled low, almost under his breath, as he stared and in the end Kazunari couldn’t help it.

He outstretched a hand and laid it on the wolf’s head, in between his ears.

“Takao!” Izuki jumped, terrified that the gesture of dominance would anger the animal, but he stood, dumbfounded, when the wolf just turned to stare at Kazunari, without moving from under his touch.

“Scratch him behind his ears.” Momoi giggled conspiratorially, “He loves it, but he’s too much of a tsundere to come and ask for cuddles.”

Takao obeyed and much to his dismay the wolf grumbled something but stood where he was, allowing him. Okay, his childhood wishes were all being granted in a single night.

“You’re quite a cutie, aren’t you, Midorin-sama?” he chuckled.

Midorin’s green eyes stared at him, unwavering and deep, wild yet calm, like a forest in good weather, apparently innocuous but filled with raw strength. They were beautiful and Takao’s hand moved to caress the wolf cheek.

Momoi observed. Midorima was rarely one to give trust away, even after a very long time, but she had noticed him observing the human through her screens all those nights. She couldn’t say what, but something in this Takao had caught the werewolf doctor’s interest, and it was weird. Quite endearing, to be honest, but weird nonetheless.

“Uhm, I don’t mean to be rude, but…” Momoi turned just to meet the weirdest pair of eyebrow she had ever seen, “…whose clothes are these?”

Kagami Taiga. She had made some researches on him and he was an ex-firefighter. After his deposition had been taken about what he claimed to be a werewolf attack he left the department to join the research team about those creatures. He was strong, but not the smartest; definitely less of a threat than the girl, Riko Aida, chemical engineer specialized in genetic researches, so Momoi simply put up a big smile as she got up from the table.

“Oh, my flatmate’s.” she said, waving the matter away with a hand, “I live here with six other guys, but they’re all away now.” She faked a worried look to the storm outside the window, being careful to keep her back turned to Takao. “Seijuro and Ryouta were supposed to come back from their photo-shot around midday; Kuroko — maybe you’ve met him — is the local kindergarden teacher so he’s probably still at school because he slept there yesterday, with the bad weather promising hell; Shintarou and Atsushi went to the other town to gather supplies for the local pharmacy yesterday and should come back tomorrow.” Proud of the amused look in Sei’s eyes, Momoi pretended to bit her lower lip, “I just hope they didn’t try anything funny… They’re all very protective of me, I wouldn’t be surprised if they tried to get here despite the storm just because I’m alone.”

“The roads seemed out of use.” Alex supplied, following her gaze to the raging sky, “Only a suicidal bastard would try to get up here with this weather.”

“Oh, it wouldn’t surprise me.” Momoi chuckled to herself, shaking her head, before sitting on the floor.

As soon as she did that, Ki happily trotted to her side and sat behind her to sniff at her hair and leave them all uncombed. Dai growled something when Mukkun left Himuro alone to run in front of Satsuki and started helping in the process of ruining her hair. Sei scoffed at them before moving to sit at her other side, not exactly joining the game but looking down on the members of his pack fondly, his tail sometimes moving slowly.

“Isn’t it dangerous? Leaving a girl up here all alone, I mean. If anything were to happen…” Himuro tried to say, but a pink glare shut him up.

“I am safe.” Momoi declared, her hand caressing Ki’s side as the blond wolf bounced all around her to reach and caress Sei’s chest as the other arm circled around Mukkun’s neck, “I have these guys here to protect me.” A smirk flashed on her lips before being replaced by the usual smile. “Not to mention, it wasn’t me who was in trouble just now, was I?”

The ashamed silence made her laugh as Mukkun positioned himself to sleep with his head in her lap and Ki went instead to bother Sei, trying to get him into playing.

***

Izuki had to admit, he had never seen wild wolves acting like that. He had seen Riko’s eyes looking for his, but hadn’t dare to answer yet. It was true that the wolves he had sneakily studied his whole life didn’t act like that, no wolf ever studied acted completely like that, but it was also true he had never had the chance to find such a peculiar pack.

Under insistence, Momoi had told them the general story of ever member of the pack. Sei, the Alpha, who started off as a lonely wolf and earned his place stopping a fight between Midorin, the best nose, and Mukkun, the biggest stomach; Dai, her childhood friend who was the strongest hunter, and Ki, the eternal puppy and honestly the most beautiful wolf Izuki had ever seen; and Tetsu, the Omega who left his previous pack to join this and ended up the mate of the Alpha, effectively climbing the hierarchy of the path to the second-in-command position.

Tetsu was a rare white wolf and Izuki would have sold his soul to check to see if it was albinism or if the result of breeding, but he had vanished. It took them all a bit to realize, but when Momoi had started talking about him, they had noticed he had left the room at a certain point.

“He found a pup some time ago.” Satsuki had sighed, “Our pack is rather strong,” and nobody questioned the possessive adjective, not with her sitting in a pile of fur and warm bodies, “so we probably scared and chased away the pack the used to be here. Apparently, they abandoned a pup and Tetsu just went and chose it was his.” She rolled her eyes when someone growled at her, “And Sei’s.”

Sei scoffed, satisfied, and moved to lay down once more, his head on Ki’s, the blond snorting happily in the middle of a pile of friends, but as he did so his golden eyes pierced through the most silent man in the history of humanity.

Masaomi stared back, but the wolf closed his eyes and pretended to sleep.

“May I ask where is the pup?” Izuki asked, frowning, “It’s weird for wolves to allow humans near their families.”

“But I am not human, not for them.” Momoi retorted patiently, like a teacher to a stubborn kid, “The pup is usually around the house, he’s a troublemaker really, but with you around Tetsu hid him and they’re probably together now. Sei is the Alpha so he has to keep an eye on the possible threat and protect the whole pack; the duty to defend that pup in particular is Tetsu’s.”

Izuki nodded pensively and Riko hesitated, for a moment.

Thunders were heavy outside the lodge.

***

When dinner came around, Momoi offered them to share their supplies to see if there was enough for all the humans to last ‘till the end of the storm.

“Three days more.” she said, looking at the sky with Dai’s heavy body plopped on her back, head and paws dangling from her shoulders, after the umpteenth bicker between them, “It shouldn’t last longer.”

“We have can food mainly, I fear.” Riko sighed, “We were supposed to go to the down to restock tomorrow, but it should be enough for three days.”

Momoi shrugged, before heading to the freezer and pulling out the biggest steak Kagami had ever seen. Hyuuga tensed when Mukkun immediately ran to her, but the animal didn’t attack, simply started whining as if asking for some as his comrades ignored the whole thing.

“I have more.” she declared, “These guys here always hunt for me too.”

“…Whose meat is that, exactly?”

Momoi just smiled mysteriously at Himuro and went to cook.

***

When she was done with the food, all the wolves literally ran away from the kitchen.

Ten minutes later, the humans understood why.

***

With the combined effort of Kagami and Himuro, they managed to save something edible and even to wash away some of the bear-y taste, so they ended up eating with Momoi talking eagerly about that time her wolves came home with an whole bear and a puppy.

“I swear I’ve never seen Sei so smug before.” she said and the copper wolf, with his paws on the window as he stared outside and sniffed at the glass, suddenly turned to look at her, “He likes having a pup around, the two of them together are adorable.”

Sei went back to his four legs, but didn’t approach the group. He eyed one person in particular, then growled and went away, climbing upstairs where his mate was probably hiding with the pup.

“He really doesn’t like Akashi-san, uh?” Kagami commented, frowning, “I wonder why…”

“Wolves have great instincts.” Masaomi moved his eyes on Satsuki, who held his gaze coldly as she went on, “They know whom they can trust.”

***

Momoi offered the humans the various rooms of her flatmates.

Midorin growled and huffed to prevent Kagami from entering one, but immediately calmed down when Takao tried to get in and in the end allowed Kasamatsu too. Kagami ended up sharing with Himuro in a room that had tons of porn magazines hidden under the mattress, while Hyuuga and Izuki found themselves in what looked like a rebellious teenager room filled with posters of a blond model they had never seen. Masaomi was shown a room with the longest bed man had ever built.

Riko and Akex were accompanied to the only room with a double bed but when the door was opened they were met with big blue eyes. Four of them.

Tetsu, white fur and big body slumped on the floor, had a stuffy toy in his mouth and was keeping it still while a little cub, black and white in fur and no bigger than his head, tried to snatch it away or to attack it. The pup was definitely determined, but his efforts were quite useless.

“Oh, my, he’s adorable!” Riko couldn’t help herself, especially when the cub noticed them and fell on his butt for releasing his grip all of a sudden.

Momoi giggled. “Sorry, Tetsu-kun! We need the room.”

Tetsu barked once, letting go of the plush, but then he got up and grabbed with his mouth the cub that was mid-air in a attack to his motionless prey. The younger one let out a disappointed bark when his adoptive parent started trotting toward the door with him, but his pain lasted little.

As Momoi moved to a side, Sei slipped in and grabbed the forgotten toy, eliciting an excited sound from his pup, before following his mate out of the room and downstairs.

The whole exchange had been quite fast, Tetsu clearly anxious to bring his cub away from the humans, and Momoi smiled at the other girls as if nothing had happened.

“Have a good night!” she wished before moving to her own room.

Riko said nothing, but a shiver ran down her spine when she noticed, in the crack of the open door before their host hastily closed it again, a scarily huge amount of camera videos.

***

The storm, as predicted, didn’t get any better, not that night nor the following day. In the morning, the humans found the wolves all sleeping in a single pile in the living room, with Tetsu and his cub in the middle as if to protect them.

Takao and Izuki fell in love with the little pest in the little moment they got to see him, chewing at Sei’s ear while the bigger wolf pretended to be still asleep, before Tetsu picked him up with his mouth and disappeared upstairs again, this time slipping into Momoi’s room as she was getting out.

For being domesticated and calm, the wolves seemed still wary of the humans and definitely not keen on leaving them alone with what they probably considered the only female of their pack.

Takao was permanently stuck to Midorin, watching him with eyes as wide as a child’s even when the animal was doing literally nothing, while after the previous night Mukkun was always around Himuro, as if he expected the human to produce a steak out of thin air. Dai and Ki playfully fought on the floor, much to Momoi’s offense, and Sei went upstairs to his mate and pup as soon as Masaomi joined the others downstairs for breakfast.

Riko asked questions. Many questions. About the wolves, about Momoi, but even about her supposed flatmates. Every time, Takao would shook his head at Aida discretely, assuring her that their host was telling nothing but the truth.

At lunch, both Sei and Tetsu came downstairs, this time with the pup — Nigou, Momoi told them — excitedly running after them and picking himself up after slamming his face on the floor dead on for taking the stairs with a bit too much eagerness.

Sei barked once and all the wolves seemed to change. They ran to their Alpha and he scratched on the entrance door once, head turning to Momoi.

The girl hesitated for a moment, biting her lower lip, but got up and went to open it.

“You better be careful.” she muttered as she watched the wolves running out without looking back.

“Where are they going?” Izuki asked.

“Hunting.” Riko answered.

The look she and Momoi exchanged was as cold as the thickest ice and as unreadable as the Sphinx’s face.

***

The wolves came back late at night, far after the humans had their dinner, with their furs occasionally stained in deep red.

They brought back part of their hunt, included a well recognizable head of deer that seemed to be there as a trophy or better, and Riko shivered at the thought, like an alibi of sort.

Sei looked at her as if saying that here were her proofs. They had killed animals and not humans. They were normal wolves.

Masaomi looked greenish when he saw the copper wolf breaking his prey’s skull between his fangs, blood dripping through them and golden eyes shining in a clear threat. Immediately after that, the Alpha reached his mate and pup and the little one cheerfully dragged his dad into a fake-fight that had the white wolf scoff while bringing the deer’s horns away from the play ground.

***

On the third day, the humans woke up to something weird.

First of all, the sky looked slightly better, even if it was still raining. Second, there were humans in the living room.

The hunters stood frozen in seeing the group of men casually sitting on the couch and armchairs, chatting calmly while drinking tea. Drinking tea!

Well, to be fair, the tallest one was eating biscuits with a grumpy expression, but that wasn’t the point.

There were four of them. The tallest one with purple air, another giant with glasses and green hair and a blond beauty that was whining childishly at a tanned man picking at his ear with his pinky.

“GUYS!”

Kagami barely made it to a side before Momoi ran downstairs and jumped on the back of the blue-haired man, an arm open to lay her hand on the blond’s head.

“Oi, Satsuki, don’t shout! Lil’ Tetsu just fell asleep.”

“It was such a roller coaster, he was still so energetic.”

Momoi laughed and then turned, proceeding to introduce her four friends to the group of hunters. There was a moment of silence as the two groups studied each others, then…

“Oi, Satsuki! Why are they wearing my clothes?!”

***

The lodge looked littler with all the person inside, now, but at least the wolves were nowhere to be found.

“They don’t like when there’s too many people around, especially with the puppy.” Momoi explained with a shrug, “With the weather like this, they woke me up in the middle of the night to be left out. I guess they’re back to the cave.”

“I hope you didn’t let them sleep on our beds again, Momoi.” Midorima’s stern voice matched his pose, arms crossed and back straight, as he glared at her.

“Don’t worry, Midori-…ma!” Riko frowned: did Satsuki just hesitated with her friend’s name?, “Takao-kun slept in your bed!”

“What?!”

“Eheh…” Takao had the decency to look a bit uneasy, “Sorry about that, it was kind of an emergency.”

“Isn’t someone still missing?” Everybody’s eyes moved to Masaomi as the man stood on his feet in the middle of the room, his gaze flickering nervously from Momoi to her human friends, as if testing how much they knew and how much he could ask, “I thought…”

“You can quit playing games.” It seemed like everybody flinched as the cold yet clearly mocking voice interrupted the older Akashi and when they found the source, it was like a collective breath was being held. In the deafening sound, a young man with striking red hair and cold scarlet eyes walked into the room while fixing the buttons of his black shirt cuffs. He looked elegant and refined, commanding even in jeans and bare feet as he walked up to the older man. “It’s not like I wasn’t expecting you to show up sooner or later, and in any case there are hardly any secrets in this family, father.”

The humans all gaped, too busy wrapping their brains around the word ‘father’ to notice Momoi’s fidgeting. Better, to notice it was fake.

“I’m sorry, Akashi-kun.” she said, careful not to let Takao see her face clearly as she moved closer her friend, “I know I shouldn’t have let…”

“You don’t have to apologize, Momoi.” The change in attitude was clear, voice gentler and softer eyes as the man looked at the girl, “You could hardly let all these people out in that weather just because he was with them. I understand.”

“I’m still sorry.” she pouted, latching onto the younger Akashi’s arm as she turned to glare at the older one, this time with no pretense in the slightest, “I definitely don’t like him, though!”

“I appreciate it.”

The air was tense after that little exchange, everybody staring at the two Akashi confronting each other.

Seijuro’s eyes held the look of a nobleman staring down to a mouse. If he didn’t scrunch his nose at his father, it was probably due to his usual polite and cold demeanor, but it didn’t mean he was doing anything to hide the distaste running in his mind. It was enough to froze Masaomi on the spot, unable to talk, and that scared Riko, honestly.

She had met the older Akashi as a businessman. Ruthless, merciless, cold and calculative, sometimes to the point of utter disregard of people and their efforts. He was not a man that could be stared down, or so she had thought, yet here he was, completely unable to say a word in front of the his own son.

Not that he blamed him: the guy was simply terrifying, despite the quiet way he was posing himself.

“PANCAKES!”

Masaomi visibly flinched at the scream willing the air, while everybody jerked in surprise. Momoi was the first one to realize and she giggled with a little smile, letting go of the arm she had taken hostage.

Seijuro closed his eyes and took a deep breath, but Riko widened her eyes when she saw the man’s ice melting simply in a little but warm smile. He didn’t even turn before a little bundle flew through the room and jumped onto him to latch itself around his waist.

“Dad, pancakes!” A kid. A kid with messy black hair that defied gravity and big round eyes that shone at the mere thought of the sweet breakfast; a bright smile demanding attention just as much as his loud childish voice, “Papa promised pancakes, I want pancakes!”

“Yes, yes.” Seijuro smiled even more, his hands grabbing at his son’s sides to pull him up in his arms, simply ignoring Murasakibara’s “I want pancakes too, Aka-chin…”.

“Blueberries pancakes!” the kid shouted directly into his father’s ear, bouncing with happiness while grabbing at his father’s red locks.

Akashi simply helped him climb to his shoulders and sitting on them — as if it was nothing!, Kagami couldn’t help but wonder how he could because the kid wasn’t that little, after all — before moving to the fridge and pulling out the ingredients he needed.

“Where is Papa, Tetsuya?” he asked instead, careful to ignore his son’s surprised expression at being called with his first name instead of his nickname.

“Papa’s brushing his hair.” he declared, eyes scanning attentively the way his father was cracking eggs, “It looked like a crows’ nest.”

Seijuro snorted at what was probably definitely not an exaggeration of his lover’s bedhead.

Masaomi stared.

He had never been a great father and he had always known it, far before everything with his son had happened; he simply had never thought it was a skill that he needed to polish in any way, since he had more than enough money to provide his son with someone else who could take care of all his needs. With nothing even close to an example, though, Seijuro still acted like a doting parent and his son was showing him an easiness that could only come with a great deal of affection and trust.

His son had been cautious around him in a way Nigou wasn’t.

Seijuro was letting his son pull at his hair and blubbering endlessly about everything that came to his mind, but it was clear that he was listening attentively despite working on breakfast, because he would sometimes offer a sentence or two to the conversation that would either make the kid think or laugh. Soon enough, the sweet scent of the pancakes filled the kitchen and the smell called someone over.

Masaomi wouldn’t have noticed him if Seijuro hadn’t turned to the entrance of the kitchen and Nigou hadn’t yelled, excitedly, again, but when he moved his eyes a beautiful man was joining them.

He was shorter than Seijuro and with messy azure hair that identified him immediately as the infamous ‘Papa’. The eyes were the same of Nigou, but his complexion paler, and he lit a smile on the face of his lover by just walking around in a long white T-shirt that reached his mid-thigh.

“Good morning.” he called quite apathetically, apparently to no one in particular, as he walked up to his lover and son. And that seemed to be it because he just wrapped his arms around Seijuro’s waist and leaned with a temple against his back, in between his shoulder-blades, with no obvious intention to move anytime soon.

Nigou giggled from his higher position, before turning to lay his chin on his dad’s head.

“Someone is grumpy.” Seijuro dared to say, just to flinch when he received a quite clearly harsh pinch to a side that made him add, almost apologetically, “I added vanilla to the butch.”

That seemed to settle the other’s mood enough to draw out of him a satisfied sight. Aomine hid a “whipped” in between faked coughs that ended as soon as Seijuro, with all the luggage of his family still latched on him, turned to show him a threatening smile.

The little Tetsuya was placed to eat his pancakes at the coffee table, eagerly stuffing his mouth with a blessed expression under his fathers’ half resigned and fond expression.

The kid seemed to notice only then how many eyes were on him.

“What?” he asked, tilting his head to a side.

“Tetsuya.” His other father, Kuroko, didn’t change his expression in the slightest, but his voice sounded unmistakably with a ‘disappointed-mom’ tone. “Don’t talk with your mouth full. Are you one of Momoi-san’s wolves?”

Seijuro had to hold back from smirking at his lover’s voice. With those simple words he could see the doubt fading even more from Riko’s eyes: she was the only one still suspicious of them; as soon as he gave up, they were completely safe. And right now, she was too busy finding Nigou cute to think of him as a possible were-wolf.

“Yeah!” Seijuro had to hold back from flinching, this time, but luckily his son was smart like him. “I’m a great wolf howling to the moon!”

The way Nigou swung his fork, completed with a piece of pancake, to the sky made everybody smile, clearly taking his words as a child’s game. It didn’t mean Akashi had any intention of risking more.

“Alright, Tetsuya.” he said bending to ruffle the kid’s hair, “The great wolf now needs to finish his breakfast and go brush his fangs.”

“But, Daaaaad…!”

Akashi arched a brow. Nigou stuck his lower lip out. Seijuro crossed his arms. Tetsuya’s eyes went big and watery.

“You’re not winning this, young man.”

“Meanie!”

In the end, grumbling and with the promise of a lot of games later, little Tetsuya ran upstairs to brush his teeth, accompanied with a relieved sigh from his father.

“It’s in your family line.” For the first time, Kuroko’s face shifted in expression, showing off a slightly annoyed frown. “The sons always come out to defeat the fathers. You should start watching your back, Seijuro: just imagine when he’ll hit puberty.”

Seijuro shot him a dirty look that would have killed half the men in the room, but Kuroko ignored him completely to collect his son’s dish to go wash it. Momoi, Aomine and Kise snickered.

***

The weather kept on getting better through the day and by lunch the rain had stopped, despite the sky still being a dark shade of gray.

“You’re leaving in the afternoon.” Seijuro announced sternly before Kuroko brought Tetsuya in to eat, “Murasakibara and Aomine will drove you to town with our trucks, you can get the local mechanic to go retrieve your quads when the ground has dried enough for the tow truck to make it.”

Masaomi seemed to have something to say, but instead he pulled his lips in a thin line and stood silent. Riko didn’t object. Takao fidgeted, but nobody said anything.

When Tetsuya trotted in the room, heading at full speed to his father’s lap, the decision had been taken.

***

The hunters were done with collecting their stuff pretty soon. Masaomi kept on stealing glances to his son, the mate and his grandson, but none of the three acknowledged him back. Kuroko spent most of the time playing with the kid, with Seijuro joining them when he wasn’t answering Riko’s questions about the wolves, since both him and Satsuki had decided that giving her the informations she wanted was the best way to kill her last suspicions. The other wolves, just helped or simply stood out of troubles. Midorima actually fixed Takao’s bandages, much to Momoi’s offense.

By three in the afternoon they were ready.

As Akashi had said, Aomine and Murasakibara were behind the wheels of two big trucks, waiting for the hunters to get in, but little Tetsuya was running around, looking at all the humans as if curious all of a sudden.

When he stopped in front of Masaomi, Seijuro stiffened considerably. Kuroko laid his hand on his lover’s arm, trying to calm him down, before before they could call him back, the kid spoke.

“Did you make my dad sad?” The innocence that filled both the question and the blue eyes staring up at him made the older Akashi fidget nervously for a moment and that was apparently enough of an answer, because Nigou tilted his head to a side. “If you did, you should apologize. It’s a bad thing, didn’t you know? You should say sorry.”

Masaomi had never been fond of children, in general. His son had been just another predetermined step in following the family’s expectations and, while he had developed some kind of affection for him, he had never felt that kind of parental love ‘till the moment when he had realized his son — his wolf son — had left forever. When he started wondering about his late wife, things had went downhill and the need to find Seijuro had become an obsession, something he couldn’t help. The day he had seen his son in town, heard a child calling him “Dad” so affectionately, he had realized Seijuro had always only called him “Father”. He hadn’t expected it to hurt so bad.

The kid staring up at him was the most normal child you could find. A bit messy, a bit clumsy, a bit defying, but that was okay. He was clearly happy and loved his parents deeply, with the honest affection kids used to give out so easily, without wondering much about worthiness or not, just as that brat wasn’t thinking much about forgiveness or not: to him, apologizing was enough to fix everything.

Masaomi wasn’t a child, he knew sometimes a “sorry” wasn’t enough.

So he simply outstretched a hand, laying it on top of Tetsuya’s head carefully, just for a second. It was still enough to make Seijuro snap and take a step forward as if ready to bite his hand off, so he let go of the little touch almost immediately.

His palm tingled with Nigou’s warmth and, turning his back to the lodge to reach for his seat on the trucks, Masaomi wondered if he had ever done something similar with Seijuro.

He knew he hadn’t.

***

Seijuro couldn’t help but scoop Nigou up in his arms as soon as Masaomi had turned his back to them. His heart was racing in his brain, rendering even the simple act of thinking difficult as he felt torn in between an animalistic instinct to kill and a more human part of him that was screaming to run away with his son, somewhere his father would never find them again.

Nigou laced his arms around his neck an laid a quite fallen face on the crook of his neck.

“I wanted him to apologize, daddy.” he muttered and Akashi couldn’t answer, but only ran a hand through his hair as if to erase the touch of Masaomi.

He didn’t know what he wanted, instead.

Kuroko’s arms wrapped around them both of them as soon as the two car vanished down the path to town.

***

Aomine and Murasakibara came back with a little surprise.

“He wouldn’t leave!” Daiki was screaming impossibly loudly, clearly exasperated, while pointing with a finger to a grinning black-haired man.

“Sorry, I couldn’t!” Takao scratched his head sheepishly, but didn’t look apologetic at all, “Midorin’s eyes caught me, I cannot leave them!” His face looked a bit more serious when Momoi tried to approach him, clearly determined to shoo him away. “I was quite surprised today. Midorima has unbelievably similar iris, and here I thought it was quite an unique color.”

Momoi froze. Kise and Aomine bent forward slightly, ready to attack. Murasakibara moved to stand behind Takao, cornering him.

Midorima didn’t move of an inch from his spot behind Momoi. His constipated face said enough about how conflicted he was.

“I expect you didn’t tell the others the reason of your prolonged stay.” Everybody turned, surprised, but Akashi looked just as calm as ever, his son sitting on his shoulders and his ‘I-already-knew-this-would-have-happened’ expression that was honestly grating on Shintarou’s nerves right now. “That would give us quite some troubles.”

“Not a word~!” Takao sung, “I told them I realized I wasn’t cut for this kind of adventure and that my injury opened my eyes on that. They think I’ll take a train tomorrow morning to go back to Tokyo.”

Momoi bit her lower lip. When her female intuition had kicked in the first time she had seen Midorima staring at Takao through screen, she hadn’t expected this. Turning and staring at Akashi, she realized he, instead, had.

Seijuro moved a step in and to a side, showing the open door to the human.

“Kuroko arranged a bed in Shintarou’s room. You’ll have to do with that for now, but we’ll see about a better solution after things quiet down a bit.” he said, as if talking about the weather. Finally, he smiled a bit. “Welcome to our very dysfunctional family, Kazunari. I have a feeling you’ll fit right in quite rapidly.”

Takao’s cheerful exclamation covered Aomine’s shocked “He stays?!”. Kise seemed dumbfounded for a while but soon enough he was grinning and had a arm swung around the other’s neck, whispering something in his ear that made them both giggle and then stare at Midorima as they went in.

Akashi chuckled, while moving inside the house, at his friend’s outraged “What was that?!” and Atsushi’s demands for food, and he kept on smiling even as he felt a tug on his hair.

“Dad, what did that mean?” Nigou asked, his voice laced with confusion but excitement, and Seijuro smiled.

“You’ll have a new uncle from now on, darling.” he said, but his eyes were focused on the figure descending the stairs and approaching them.

Kuroko looked impassive, but there was softness at the corner of his eyes.

“Midorima-kun looked at him the way you do with me.” he said softly, “I was hoping he’d come back.”

They added nothing because the house was suddenly filled with a bunch of loud people chaotically trying to get into a whole new set of gears for their recently enlarged family, but they didn’t need to.

Next heat season, Aomine would probably cry.

***

Extra:

“Come on, Shin-chan! You can’t know if we don’t try!”

“For the hundredth time, Takao, you won’t become a werewolf if I bite you!”

“Yeah, at most you get pregnant.”

“Daiki.”

“Daaaaaaaad, what’s pregnant? Can I get pregnant too? I want to get pregnant!”

“Aomine-kun, I’m giving you three seconds. Run.”

Authoress’ notes:

I wanted to add Masaomi, that was the only thing I wanted to do and it was enough to take the life out of me -.- Sorry, I tried to forgive him, but I still can’t. That’s the most he’ll ever get from me (and Sei).

I hope you liked it, Anon! There is less wolf-time than usual, though ^^”

See you,

Agap

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